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Our longest day since riding in the cold rain in East France. It was mostly a nice ride today, although almost 70 miles does wear on the body and cut into the time that you have to be a true tourist!
We left Sirmione early, as the Saturday morning lake traffic was stacking up...
And very quickly were in pretty rural farmland.
Grapes, wheat, etc.
This ended abruptly when we wound up in the maze around the Verona Airport
Here's the detour our GPS recommended, Via Airporte...
We found another way around and and were soon in corn country. Did we take a right turn into Iowa?
Apparently yes.
We found the agribusiness part of Italy!
Finally, desperate for a lunch spot we sat under a tree across from a waste transfer station. That was the low point of the day. After that it got pretty again and 30 miles later we pulled into Vicenza, and Casa Lili. Vicenza didn't look very promising from what we saw coming in, and it was late and we were beat... but we had read that at one point Vicenza was the wealthiest city in Italy, as well as being the birthplace of the famous architect Palladio, so we figured we'd better get off our butts go see what was to be seen.
On our way to the historic center, we passed TWO festivals!
BBQ cookoff
And lighting design (the energy nerd in me got quite excited about the Lumens Festival, but they couldn't start it until it got dark - almost 10 p.m. - by which time I would be asleep!)
We walked about 10 minutes and then saw this promising old thing
Inside the city walls, the city totally changed.
There were pallazi and churches everywhere, and as we approached the main square, the buildings got grander and grander...
And Palladio projects peeped through
The main square itself was second only to San Marco in Venice. In fact they have the same giant column with the Venetian lion!
It was Saturday evening, so there was a fair amount of passageo-ing going on..
Most of the sights were closed for the day, but we were ready for dinner, so we hustled through town, taking note of the incredible number of grand buildings.
Some with signs of many eras of remodeling
And others with the ancient junk that they dug up in the back yard on display.
Finally we found our dinner destination, Helmut. I read an expat American's blog, and she said that this place has a hamburger that would be considered good in America. That sounded like a nice change of pace, so off we went.
It did not disappoint. Lots of good beers on tap, I had a great IPA.
And hamburgers and fries for both of us
And of course a salad, because our parents are reading!
After that we passageo-ed home, where we were surprised to find out that we had a suitemate! He was a nice Egyptian guy who owns a wine shop in Italy. We had a quick discussion about our trip to Egypt, and then we hit the hay, realizing that we had to see most of the sights of Vicenza in the morning.
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